


Higher

by RobotSquid



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-24
Updated: 2012-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-31 16:10:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobotSquid/pseuds/RobotSquid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Grand Highblood and the Summoner meet in secret for the last time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Higher

Nobody could ever hope to beat the Grand Highblood in a drinking contest. If you tried, he’d make sure you were dead of alcohol poisoning before he even got tipsy.

That never stopped the cavalreapers from talking big, from daring to take him on, from trying every last substance he had to offer, from straight drink to concentrated sopor slime, that peculiar blue poppy smoke or the thick black sludge the Highblood cooked up personally. It wasn’t uncommon for the revelries to wind down quickly. So many talked big and so few could back it up. But the show was the whole fun of it.

At some point, the Summoner began to suspect that it was all to impress him. It was almost embarrassing the number of times the Grand Highblood looked his way, nodding, grinning, searching the orangeblood’s face for approval. The Summoner laughed and raised his glass in response, as always. As was appropriate. And watched more and more of his cavalreapers fall over shitfaced. He wondered how many of them would still try to make it to training in the evening. The Summoner never bothered to punish the ones who missed drills due to a hangover. Their own bodies ravaged them well enough.

Sometimes the Summoner felt flattered that the Grand Highblood treated his squad so well. Others would believe it was because the Summoner’s cavalreapers were the finest ever known in Alternia’s history. And that was true enough. The real reason was less obvious to the untrained eye.

Eventually, the dinner wound down past the point of entertainment. Half the cavalreapers were passed out, and the others had either moved on to sloppy drunk—and embarrassing—makeouts or sitting in a corner crying about how their lusus had never loved them.

It was at that point, always, that the Summoner and Grand Highblood locked eyes, and each made their separate excuses. And since every troll near the Summoner’s seat was asleep in their food, it was less of an effort.

The Summoner nonchalantly rose from his seat, stretching and flapping his wings a few times. Sweeps ago they would have condemned him to a life of objectification, snatched up by highbloods as a trophy, a display piece. Wings among trolls were so rare; wings among lowbloods even more impossible.

They hadn’t started to grow in until his second sweep as a cavalreaper recruit. Telling anybody was out of the question, and so he’d kept them bound against his back as well as he could manage on his own, letting them out to stretch before bed each morning.

The Grand Highblood himself had been the first to see.

The Summoner remembered the incident well, and even though the Highblood was far from a source of fear to him now, the memory still brought a cold sweat. The Highblood and his subjugglators had come to personally oversee a training session. The Summoner had been eager to impress, not only because lowbloods had to work twice as hard to avoid culling, but because the Highblood’s satisfaction with his performance would directly lead to his gaining a squad of his own. And so the Summoner had sparred mercilessly with his training partner that night, attracting the attention of every troll in the courtyard, much less the Grand Highblood himself.

The display, as he expected, had been a success, but had left his wings sweating and itching unrelentingly under the binding. Under the guise of leaving for something to drink, the Summoner had darted away behind one of the weapon storehouses and ripped away his shirt and binding. He just needed a minute to air them out. That was it…and then he would go back.

He’d never expected the Grand Highblood to follow him.

He’d certainly never expected to live to tell about it.

The Highblood had promised not to tell. The Summoner, at the time, could not fathom why. He had been certain that he’d sabotaged all his chances at advancing in the ranks, that he’d never get a squad of his own, that he’d be personally culled by subjugglators. And yet, everything went back to normal. If anything, things improved.

The Summoner had gotten his own squad, he had gained several ranks, and was even relocated to the capital city. He saw the Grand Highblood more and more often, as a natural result of his duty and location.

The Highblood never told anyone about his wings. One night, the Summoner had mustered up the courage to ask him why.

“I haven’t seen a winged orangeblood in almost a hundred sweeps,” the Highblood had told him, his indigo eyes flaring with admiration. “You’re a motherfucking miracle, grub.”

Just recalling that moment brought a smile to the Summoner’s face, and more than a tiny orange blush. He stepped out of the room, heading offhandedly for the door leading into the corridor, and he heard the Highblood follow him.

Almost immediately he found himself pushed gently up against the wall, and the Highblood’s lips were on his. The indigoblood was so much bigger than him, bigger than even seatrolls, and yet his touch was all gentleness. The most feared leader next to Her Imperious Condescension was nothing but careful and tender when he was with him.

Still, the Summoner never liked public displays of their relationship. Although several in his squad suspected it, and he had never denied it, he still preferred to keep their moments private.

“You smell particularly awful tonight,” the Summoner said. “You ought to have more consideration for me when you’re mixing your drinks.”

“Aah,” the Highblood laughed in response. “You’ll have to forgive me for getting a bit emotional about you leaving on patrol.”

The Summoner felt his heart clench up a bit, and he nodded tightly with a forced smile. “It’s only a perigee,” he replied. “And then I’ll be back.”

It hurt so much to lie to his face.

“You’d best,” the Highblood replied, reaching down and sweeping the Summoner up in his massive arms. “It wouldn’t do to have a troll of my high motherfucking standing moping about because a matesprit broke his heart.”

The Summoner made a face as the Highblood began to carry him away to his chambers. “You say the mushiest shit, do you know that?”

The Grand Highblood only laughed.

The Summoner was not exceptionally fond of the Highblood’s respiteblock for many reasons, not least of which being the layers and layers of troll blood painting the wall. It enraged him, but he said nothing about it. He couldn’t, for the Highblood simply wouldn’t understand. For subjugglators, it was only natural to “admire” the colors of the hemospectrum. They worshipped those colors, enthralled with the way they mixed together. But it was all warped, so misguided…it wasn’t the way the colors ought to go together at all. They had all dried up, faded to a sickly, diseased brown color, all hints of beauty gone. It was not a celebration of life, as the subjugglators claimed. It was a carnival of death.

The Summoner nervously felt for the necklace hanging precariously just under his shirt. Normally he would remember to remove the heretical symbols, but he had made the conscious decision to wear them tonight. If the Highblood saw, so be it.

They arrived at the respiteblock, and the Summoner struggled to keep his mind off the walls. Luckily, the Highblood was there to assist. The Highblood’s pile of juggling clubs—some still stained with blood splatter—was never the most comfortable of piles, but the Summoner rarely laid on them directly. It agitated his wings, and the Highblood was sure to crush the smaller troll if he were to be on top. And so, as per the usual arrangement, the Highblood laid in the pile, the Summoner resting comfortably on his chest.

Despite the danger of the Highblood—or perhaps because of it—the indigoblood was completely intoxicating. The vivid color of his eyes was so pure and dark, there was no color like it on all of Alternia. The feel of his face paint smearing against the Summoner’s own was ridiculously exhilarating, and there was nothing like having his enormous hands stroking the Summoner’s entire body from top to bottom.

Most nights, when they were alone, the Summoner loved running his hands through the mass of hair adorning the Highblood’s skull. Many found it off-putting, or even unsettling, because it had its own aura, almost, the blackest halo surrounding the stark, bone-white paint upon his face. The Summoner had never found it anything but enthralling. He laid on the Highblood’s chest, reaching up and smoothing out the knots of ropey, almost dreadlocked hair, loving the feel of it, loving the feel of the muscular troll beneath him, loving the way his deep laugh vibrated through his ribs and into the Summoner’s body.

“You know,” the Highblood said, gently taking hold on the Summoner’s wings in between his fingers, “I’ve half a mind to pail you right now.”

The Summoner’s smile fell off his face. “You know we can’t,” he replied flatly.

The Highblood sighed. “Yeah,” he said. With his free hand he touched the Summoner’s face, running his thumb across the orangeblood’s chin. “Motherfucking shame, it is,” he whispered.

The Grand Highblood may have been the highest troll among landdwellers, he may have possessed a blood color coveted by countless blueblood nobles, but he was not above Alternian law. He was not above the decrees of Her Imperious Condescension. Indigobloods did not fill their flushed or caliginous quadrants with any trolls besides other indigobloods. Should that law ever be broken, the genetic material would be destroyed, the lowblood culled, and the highblood forced to pail an appropriate mate.

“Pailing isn’t everything,” the Summoner said with a feeble smile. “I doubt it’d even live up to all the expectations you’ve got.”

“Ah, fuck that. I can’t stand it anymore, Summoner. I see you handling that lance like nobody’s motherfucking business and those miraculous wings and I can’t fucking _stand_ it. I’m flushed as hell for you. I don’t want anybody else in my quadrant and I don’t want anybody else in yours.”

“I know…I don’t want that either, but…you’ve got your own responsibilities to think of. Every sweep fewer and fewer indigo grubs crawl out of the caves. I think they were even saying that even the jadebloods outnumbered the indigos this past sweep.” He paused, staring into the eyes of the Highblood, though the larger troll refused to look at him. “Highblood, the indigo color is dying out. You have to preserve your lineage.”

“I can find some indigo whore to pail whenever I motherfucking please,” the Highblood replied through gritted teeth. “Just doesn’t…feel right.”

The Summoner watched the face of his matesprit, and for an instant his resolve wavered. He leaned down and kissed the Highblood’s lips, trying to preserve every last detail of the moment in his memory. It’d be the last time, after all.

It never took much for the Highblood to drift off to sleep. He was tired most of the time, and the only thing keeping him awake was some distraction. The Summoner liked for him to sleep. It lessened his constant headaches, eased his mood, took the stress off. The Summoner wondered if the Highblood would ever sleep again, after this day.

It had taken a lot of thinking, a lot of heartache, and a lot of time to get to this point. But his flushed feelings for the Highblood could no longer overpower the pain of his fellow lowbloods. The Summoner had seen much on his patrols, more than he’d ever needed to. He’d seen the worst of it, and the powerlessness of anyone to do a damn thing about it.

It had only been ten sweeps since a visionary with mutated blood had walked Alternia, and so soon, so many had forgotten him. Had forgotten what he fought for, what he stood for, and in the end, what he suffered and died for. According to the highbloods, such a troll had never existed. He was a myth and a fairytale, created by desperate, ignorant rustbloods as a way to cry themselves to sleep.

The Summoner knew the power of fairytales, and the truth in myths.

He wasn’t surprised to find that he’d dropped orange tears onto the sleeping Highblood’s face paint, the colors running together and into the mass of hair. The Summoner kissed him again, and whispered a small goodbye, a soft _I’m sorry_.

The Summoner stood from the pile, leaving the highblood to slumber. He reached for the chain around his neck and slowly pulled the necklace from beneath his shirt, revealing the forbidden symbol. The dull, grey shackles that had murdered a prophet, the tools of the Sufferer’s execution.

He grasped it tight in one fist and left the Highblood behind, committing treason with every step, betraying the ones that had let him live this long and get this far. The first step of revolution.


End file.
